Police officers - for the good of society

Many of us can recall a police officer coaching our child’s sports team, or helping with a bicycle rodeo promoting helmet use, or even giving us traffic directions.

Yes, some of us might have gotten a speeding ticket or two, or dealt with a police officer on a more serious matter, but, for the most part, police officers are just ordinary folks, raising their families in our neighbourhoods, sending their children to our schools, shopping in our stores. They’re members of our communities.

But those police officers have a vital role to play in our communities and that is to keep everyone safe, often risking their own safety in the process.

Although some people tend to try to buck the system from time to time, they mostly still maintain some level of respect for those in authority. For, in reality, society cannot exist without laws and rules and authority.

Their colleagues bravely carried on, conducting a manhunt for an individual who had shown outright contempt for police and who clearly was extremely dangerous.

The general public and the police charged with protecting them can breathe a sigh of relief that the suspect has been arrested and placed in custody.

What a terrible 30 hours it must have been for the police force and for the citizens who lived in the area where the manhunt was carried out.

Society everywhere in Canada have had their sense of security severely damaged because of this despicable crime.

In the course of time, we might learn what set the shooter off, but, whatever it was, his actions can never be justified – not only because he shot five police officers and killed three of them, but because he turned his guns on fellow human beings.

Police officers are there to protect all members of society; we all need to show them respect for that, and we need to promote that respect at home and in our schools.